Currently I am planning to get masters degree. So I am thinking about a subject in which I have to get masters degree. Following are my questions to leading physicists..

Which technology is the future of telecommunication? Currently electromagnetic waves only rules the world for telecommunication. But now a days there is very vast amount of research going on in quantum mechanics and particle physics. According my knowledge the quantum entanglement and delocalization is the base for teleportation and future of communication. I want from the experts to suggest for choosing the topic for masters degree. Is the quantum communication is possible in real world one day? Can it replace our way of telecommunication through electromagnetic waves?

masters in electromagnetism?! where such a course is offered?
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user1355Apr 27 '11 at 12:20

If i will do masters in electromagnetism, will i stay behind in time? ... NO. But if don't then you likely will fall behind the times ... assuming that your natural talent is in this sort of thing.
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user346Apr 27 '11 at 12:21

I mean to say If i do masters in electromagnetism rather than choosing quantum mechanics, will I stay behind in time? as we know quantum communication is the future...
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Surjya Narayana PadhiApr 27 '11 at 12:25

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"Master of Electromagnetism" would have been a title for Faraday, Maxwell, maybe Hertz...
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GeorgApr 27 '11 at 12:28

Also note that teleportation as in quantum teleportation has nothing to do with teleportation as in Beam me up, Scotty. I think it is a marketing gimmick to water science journalist's mouths.
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LagerbaerApr 27 '11 at 14:45

2 Answers
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Quantum communication uses electromagnetism. It's not a magic technology which communicates information from point A to point B with no physical objects carrying it. Quantum communication is carried by qubits, and you need to get qubits from one point to another; right now, it looks like the most practical way to do that is by sending photons through fiber optic cables (or maybe sending photons directly through the air or through space). Photons are the quantum version of electromagnetic waves. So studying electromagnetism will be useful to you.

Quantum communication is very far from experimental realization, and even if it were realized, electromagnetic communication will continue to exist into the indefinite future. The quantum stuff doesn't transmit information from point to point without a classical signal, and it requires carrying entangled stuff from one point to another (very carefully) to do the protocols. This is not useful for practical day-to-day communication.

To transmit information reliably, you need something you can create without large cost, send a long distance without interference, and detect on the other side. The only candidates are photons, gravitons, neutrinos, and material waves like sound or electrical currents. Neutrinos are not massless enough to create and detect in bulk, and they are a pain to detect. Gravitons have still not been detected. So you are restricted to photons or to material things. Acoustic waves are slow and noisy, and electrical currents are just guided photons in essence. So its going to be electromagnetic waves for sure, although the wavelength can shrink a lot if you use good fiberoptic cables, so that you don't have to worry about sending signals in all sorts of crazy directions.

So only in the realm of fiberoptics and nonlinear optics do you really have the potential for communication breakthroughs, you don't have to worry about anything else.

Sorry to deviate you from the topic, but, I would like you to brief me about this sentence of yours "...so that you don't have to worry about sending signals in all sorts of crazy directions." I am just a novice in this field. Thank you.
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user6846Dec 25 '11 at 17:38

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@Tariq: if you use fiberoptics, all the signal you emit is absorbed by the reciever. If you use an antenna, the signal mostly goes to outer space. If your wavelength is long, your photons are cheap, so this is not much of a waste, but if you want short pulses, you don't want to radiate huge amounts of energy in all directions. It's not that deep.
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Ron MaimonDec 27 '11 at 6:23

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It is not for from experimental realization. In fact, the commercial devices are already for sale.
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AnixxMar 26 '12 at 3:13